


redemption

by queenofcawdor



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abuse of a Minor, Alternate Character Interpretation, Gen, also apparently i have a need for tragic backstories i blame my longstanding love of comic books, for all the works that excuse voldemort, there are few that explain the other vicious characters, warnings are non explicit, warnings are so far from explicit don't worry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 09:18:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4559187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofcawdor/pseuds/queenofcawdor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>no one is cruel without reason, even a stupid, silly reason.<br/>ambition is a dangerous trait if one wants to make friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. bitch

**Author's Note:**

> ((“i wanted to destroy everything beautiful i’d never have” chuck palahniuk))

All she knows is the feel of her mother’s shouts on her ears and her father’s hands on her chest. She is six, and magic sparks along her skin in warning. Burning. Her father doesn’t touch her for a while.

 

Her mother still shouts. Screams, yells--Dolores is never good enough. Toad, her mother calls her. Dolores hopes that pink makes her feminine, and she wears it every day. She is still ugly. She knows this, and she knows it will not improve. She wears the pink anyways. It’s beautiful in a way she will never manage.

 

Ugliness is not limiting, she decides. But her mother, even though she is beautiful, is nothing without her father. Her father is a muggleborn. A mudblood, her mother hisses like rainfall. But. He holds power in the Ministry.

 

Dolores knows that what she lacks in beauty she must make up with ruthlessness. This is her power; this is what endears her to those in power. This is how she justifies herself.

 

The Hogwarts letter arrives as an afterthought. Her magic is strong but underwhelming. Her wand shoots pink sparks, and her mother buys her a cat.

 

(after the first time she dares shove her father off her -- _oh god, stop, no. please_ \-- she finds the kitten strung up by its neck. she never gets another cat, but she surrounds herself with them. in memory, not obsession. it's not obsession. it is grieving for the cat she led to its death. it is her fault, dammit. it’s not obsession, stop saying that. stop it!)

 

Dolores makes no friends on the train. One boy steps in and says, “Sorry, wrong compartment. I already have one toad with me.” Dolores wishes she has learned more about a punch than how it feels. She very much wants to teach this boy on the pain of fists.

 

She is not safe here. Not yet. A pretty girl takes up residence across her, but her attempts at conversation must be falsehoods. They must be.

 

What would a pretty girl want with Dolores? Only to embarrass her. The girl is not her friend.

 

The Sorting Hat glances through her mind and dismisses her as Slytherin. She hopes that maybe she can find friends here, here where ugliness is as common as beauty.

 

Dolores is denied this. She lacks the money and influence of her peers, and the green noose around her neck separates her from other houses.

 

_Not yet_ , she thinks. _Not yet_.

 

She saves suicide as a later option--she decides to accomplish her goals first. The goals are as follows:

  1. Revenge on Father

  2. Become someone of interest




 

Dolores is a footnote in her own life. She refuses to be so in history. This is fact. She graduates from Hogwarts and joins the Ministry of Magic.

 

She resigns herself to bureaucracy. She climbs up ranks slowly and surely. One day, she thinks. One day she can destroy those who have hurt her.

 

The beautiful, the stingy, _the Mudbloods_. They must all perish. They are alive and willing to hurt. Hurt Dolores, hurt young girls with pink magic and new kittens, hurt. hurt anyone.

 

Dolores is not nice. She refuses to be. Kindness kills, she hisses to herself. She follows the orders she is given by the Minister because he recognizes her abilities.

 

“Bitch,” they call her, eyes dripping with the dark thing in the heart. Hatred is a strong feeling, and it is something directed at her. They notice me.

 

She is powerful, at last. She is secure. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, yes. But. Dolores is corrupted. She may have always been, she tells herself. She tries hard to forget memories of a wide-eyed girl with hopes of friendship.

 

Life is cruel to her. She is cruel right back. Cruel enough to return to Hogwarts. Cruel enough to destroy the nasty liars, snitches, mudbloods. Cruel enough to make them bleed. Enough to make them hate.

 

Cruel, crueler, she destroys children for her goals. Until the children leave her to be violated, _raped,_ and she wonders at her hope for anything different.

 

She always ends up here--crushed, bloodied at the hands of a man (or, perhaps, a half-man). She wonders why she ever thinks differently.

 

“Bitch,” these students call her. They hate her worse than those in the Ministry. She is personal, close, and she tortures them worse than the man they claim to be back.

 

Dolores cuts any remaining pieces of herself away. Dolores is in too much pain to handle the world around her. She scrapes off her pink, her cats, and any hope and love she has left with every scrub of water and suds on her skin.

 

The Ministry falls, and Umbridge lives. _Bitch._

 

It’s an interesting dichotomy, a half-blood testing people’s blood purity, but she’ll manage. She always does, even when it is painful. _you bitch, you bitch! i’m not a mudblood! my parents were squibs, that’s all. that is all, you whore._


	2. clever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> percy weasley is not clever.

Percy Weasley is born in squalor. He is the third eldest. The stories he learns as he grows dictate that the third son is the cleverest. He cannot afford to believe this, but then, the Weasleys can’t afford much.

 

He is not the cleverest. Magic comes to Bill like air. Charlie flies and dragons fly with him. George and Fred excel past him too rapidly for him to even process. Ron beats him at chess by age eight. Ginny can manipulate before she can speak.

 

Percy is not the cleverest. He is ambitious, a dangerous thing to be in a Gryffindor family. But he wants to be clever. He wants to be powerful. He wants to bring honor back to the Weasley name. Because, he thinks, as he watches the muscles of Oliver Wood move while preparing for bed, he certainly won’t be continuing the Weasley line.

 

Another thing separating him from his too-clever family. Then--perhaps, perhaps, he is not gay. Perhaps he is bisexual, he determines. Even if the Veela at the World Cup do not affect him.

 

Because Penelope Clearwater is beautiful and clever, in a way he _isn’t_. He knows she is beautiful; Oliver tells him so, leaning against his bed. But she figures Percy out, so fast. She presses her lips against his skin, and she tells him that he is deluding himself.

 

It is cruel, but it is true. He throws himself farther into his studies, and then, into his work. In barely a year, he far surpasses his father in rank. Percy must be clever to do that--right? But, but, his family, they hate the Ministry, and by extension, they must hate him.

 

(in losing himself in work, he has lost his family. this is something he did not anticipate. percy scoffs, tries to bring his family back from the brink of danger. they don’t listen, why won’t they listen? percy has never been as brave as the red and gold would think)

 

He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is back, he learns. His family is right. They are right. He should have known---his family will always be more clever than him.

 

Percy remains at the Ministry, watching, waiting for--something. When he learns about the Battle at Hogwarts, he startles, before grabbing his wand and rushing to Hogwarts. He refuses to let his family down any longer.

 

He arrives, and Fred dies, and God, what has Percy done, to ignore his family? Percy fights, fights, fights, and then, at last, he allows himself to cry. His family holds him, holds together. The Weasleys lose a member, and Percy thinks it should have been him instead.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (("the best is the enemy of good." voltaire))


End file.
